The branch was now as thick as a tree trunk.  Sandy walked along it, through air so cold that you expected to walk into a sheet of ice at any moment, and looked down at the empty streets below.  At the moment, the view was about the same as you’d get from the top of a double-decker bus, but Sandy knew it wasn’t going to stay that way. 

She’d only ever seen Anastasia’s house from the front, when a group of them had been to the cinema and someone’s mum had dropped them home one by one.  It didn’t look any better from the back.  It wasn’t a cheap or dirty-looking house (never mind what Mrs Fellowes and Mrs Crowther had said), but it was… bare.  A grey rectangle like a used, smudgy rubber with a roof on top.  There was about half a metre of front drive, with a six-foot spiked fence around it.  The curtains always seemed to be drawn, even when it was light out.  Which meant that Sandy had to take a wild guess as to which of the back windows was Anastasia’s bedroom, and knock on the glass, hoping desperately that she’d got it right.

The curtain went back, and Anastasia looked out at her.  Sandy waved.

Anastasia immediately opened the window.  She didn’t take a second to recover from the shock, and she didn’t hesitate and wonder if it was a good idea.  Whatever was going on, it looked like she wanted in.  And that was when Sandy began to wonder if the plant had taken her past Anastasia’s window on purpose.

The window opened.  Sandy couldn’t see much of Anastasia’s room behind her, but there was a faint smell of chocolate, like you got from a box of cocoa powder.  A very Christmassy kind of smell, Sandy thought. 

“What are you doing?” asked Anastasia.

Sandy waved her hand from one end of the branch to the other… or, at least, from the rightmost bit you could see to the leftmost bit.  “Remember I told you about the plant someone gave me?”

Anastasia leaned out of the window to get a better look at it.  “You said it was a little plant!”

“It was, until about twenty minutes ago.  Then I got upstairs, and it…”  She looked around herself, and wasn’t sure that there were any words that could properly describe what had happened.  “It wanted to go out of the window.”

Anastasia let out a short, surprised laugh.  “And you let it?”

Sandy shrugged.  “I don’t know where it leads.  Do you want to come?”

Anastasia didn’t even say anything.  She just hoisted herself onto the windowsill, and climbed through the open window onto the plant.

(To be continued)